The Heinlein Convention Was Disappointing
Last Saturday, I attended the Robert A. Heinlein Centennial held at the Westin Crown Center Hotel here in Kansas City, Mo — Robert A Heinlein’s hometown. I am sorry to say that the event was a disappointment. It felt as if it was planned to be a high profile convention with a few thousand attendees that would inspire some genuinely insightful looks into the author’s life. Instead, the convention felt almost second rate, thrown together and lifeless.
To be fair, I only purchased the visitor’s pass, which did not allow full access to the convention, and I only spent a couple hours wandering around taking it all in. However, the turnout was such that we were assured by the attendant at registration that we would not be turned away if we wanted to attend any panels we wished to, excepting the gala dinner. In fact, the panels we did see as we wandered the halls seemed to rarely have more than five or ten attendees, and looked to be very somber lifeless affairs.
The dealers room was filled with about 5-8 different merchants, and most of them were very loosely connected to Heinlein. The only memorable aspects of the dealers room were the Yard Dog Press booth, an offering by an indy publisher I am fond of, and my discovery of the Heinlein Prize scholarship program which was genuinely interesting. I also took the opportunity to sign up for KaCSFFS, The Kansas City Science Fiction and Fantasy Society in which Heinlein was a member when he was alive.
The most disappointing feature of the convention was the Heinlein “Life museum.” This collection of scanned-in printouts of various documents provided less insight and history into Heinlein’s life than a short trip to Wikipedia would. Most of the information on display was basic biographical fluff that anyone paying to go to a convention for the author likely already knew. I wondered as I wandered passed the sparse offering when I would come across the insight or revelations about Heinlein that I expected, but it never came. The highlight and culmination of the “museum” was a bunch of scans from an old Starship Troopers board game and a few shots of storyboard art from the movie of that story.
In the end, I am glad I attended the parts of the con that I did, and I feel that it was at least minimally interesting. In fairness, organizing an event like this is a massive undertaking and takes hundreds if not thousands of man hours of work to complete. Adding to the problems, several guests canceled just before the convention and circumstances caused some of the more interesting events, like the bus tour, to be canceled as well. If the organizers had not tried for so much and instead concentrated on improving the quality of fewer offerings, I do feel the convention could have been a greater success.